Before a joint session of Congress, President John F. Kennedy announces the goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth as Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson (left) and House Speaker Sam T. Rayburn listen. Courtesy NASA.

On leadership: Trump, the shootings and the stock market

August 7, 2019

So, shortly before 10 a.m. last Sunday, I boarded a plane for New York from Florida, and shortly after 10 a.m., the pilot informed us that one of the engines was leaking, which was “a blessing in disguise,” he said, because there was also a more problematic electrical malfunction outside the cockpit that wasn’t discovered until the check of the plane right before takeoff.

Thoughts on Stephen Hawking

March 14, 2018

The word “intellectual” has become a dirty one in our culture, and scientists, artists and academics suspect. But there is no greatness in this world without great thinking.

Stephen Hawking – the transcendent English theoretical physicist, cosmologist and mathematician, who died Wednesday, March 14 at age 76 after battling motor neuron disease his entire adult life – had, of course, a great mind, one that bridged Einstein and quantum theory...

Merry, well, you know

December 23, 2017

We hear a lot at this time of year about putting the Christ back in Christmas – or, more recently, putting the Christmas back in Christmas. Indeed, one of President Donald J. Trump’s campaign promises was that we would say “Merry Christmas” again – as if we ever stopped.

This used to be a religious campaign against the commercialization of the season. With the, um, advent of Trump, it has become less about the materialism of the season – it’s hard to believe that he and his administration object to anything that makes money – and more about reclaiming a Christian identity that, they think, has been co-opted by multiculturalism and political correctness. It is factionalism versus globalism and, inevitably, us versus them, whoever they are.

And you have to wonder: Why? ...

Of studs and duds – Loss, American Pharoah & Novak Djokovic

September 1, 2015

After the highs of June (American Pharoah winning the Triple Crown) and July (planet Pluto, Novak Djokovic defending his Wimbledon title), August has been a bit of a dud for me, with AP losing to Keen Ice at the Travers this past Saturday and Nole losing the Rogers Cup (to Andy Murray) and then the Western & Southern Open (to Roger Federer). ...

Pluto: Fire and ice

July 20, 2015

The Pluto flyby has shown us how well the little planet that could is served by its name. Pluto was the Roman god of the underworld (Hades in Greek), whose queen, Proserpina (Persephone) spent spring and summer with her mother, the earth goddess Demeter, in the upper world, and fall and winter with her gloomily handsome hubby, the lord of the dead. Indeed, this arrangement was the reason we have spring and summer, when the earth is recalled to life and warmth, and fall and winter, when the earth dies coldly to itself.

Pluto the planet has icy mountains and geological activity, suggesting heat somewhere at some point:

“That leaves rethinking how thermodynamics apply at the dwarf planet,” Mika McKinnon writes. ...

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Plu(to)perfect

July 16, 2015

Well, we have been to Pluto, so to speak, and it turns out to exceed the expectations even of us Plutonians. How could it not?

Pluto is no dull little rock but a world filled with texture characterized by icy mountains and geological activity. It’s Switzerland without the Lindt chocolates, the chalets, the cuckoo clocks, the secret bank accounts and, of course, the Roger Federer ...

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